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Kathleen
(Mary) Ferrier was born in Higher Walton,
Lancashire on 22 April
1912. She was brought up in Blackburn and
left school at 14 to become a
telephonist.
Her father sang in the local choir and many members of her family followed a keen interest in music. Kathleen's early musical
interests lay in the piano, having won several
competitions by the time of her 18th
birthday.
Her vocal talents
were spotted and
nurtured by Thomas
Duerdon. But
it was her husband who bet her a shilling that she would not enter the 1937 Carlisle Festival as a singer as well as a pianist. She won both categories, and was discovered.
Her
contralto voice caught the attentions of
Gerald Moore who often
accompanied her but she
is more famously
associated with Bruno Walter.
In 1942 she took the
advice of Sir Malcom
Sargent and moved to London from Cumberland.
During the war years,
Kathleen Ferrier toured the provinces and
sang with the Bach Choir in
London where she established herself among England’s leading concert artists.
She would often delight
her audiences by closing her recitals with a Northumbrian folksong.
Her operatic debut came in
1946 at Glyndebourne, appearing in Britten's "The Rape of
Lucarettia".
The following year,
she sang Gluck’s Orpheus
also at Glyndebourne. These remained her only operatic roles.
Her appearances in Das Lied von der Erde at the Edinburgh Festival in 1947 and at Salzburg in 1949 were specially
notable. Her recording of the work with Bruno Walter (and Julius
Patzak) remains a classic. She also gave
Lieder recitals in Edinburgh and London with Walter as her partner.
She had a close artistic relationship with
Barbirolli, and her performances as the Angel in The Dream of Gerontius under
his direction were peculiarly radiant.
Covent Garden staged Gluck’s
Orpheus for her in February 1953 with Barbirolli as conductor. She could sing only two of the four scheduled performances before illness forced her to yield; these were her last public appearances.
Kathleen
Ferrier died from breast cancer
on 8 October 1953 aged 41.
She was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium
in London.
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